A man dressed as Moses stands next to a sign supporting the Texas Ten Commandments law during the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 27, amid spreading conservative efforts to display the Ten Commandments in civic institutions. Photo by Leandro Lozada / AFP / Getty Images

As of this month, many public schools in Alabama are required to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, libraries, lunchrooms and all other common spaces.

Proponents of Senate Bill 99, signed into law by Gov. Kay Iven on April 10, have claimed that these enforced displays are historical, educational and religiously neutral. As an Alabama rabbi — and a father of two future public school students — I see that defense as not just incorrect, but also deceitful, especially because the version of the Ten Commandments that the law endorses is, itself, not historically accurate.

The Ten Commandments are a sacred Jewish text. They were given to the Jewish people, written in Hebrew, and rooted in a specifically Jewish story of liberation and covenant. This law takes that text, strips it of its context, and reshapes it using a Christian lens.

The version of the Ten Commandments that will be displayed in our schools omits the text’s defining opening: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” That line grounds the commandments in the narrative of the Jewish people. To remove it is not preservation. It is distortion.

Claims of the law’s neutrality are a strategy meant to give legal and cultural cover to the fact that it clearly privileges one particular Christian worldview in public institutions meant to serve everyone.

This does not reflect the beliefs or desires of all Christians. Many Christian leaders and communities understand that faith loses its integrity when it is elevated or enforced by the state. Many of my Alabama colleagues, across religious traditions, are dismayed by this as well. They understand that this law is an ideological move that uses religion to draw boundaries around belonging, and object to that weaponization of something sacred.

In opposing Senate Bill 99, the American Historical Association made the point plainly, arguing that this law presents a distorted version of American religious history under the label of “historical truth.”

The text of the bill describes the Ten Commandments as “a key part of the Judeo-Christian religious and moral tradition” — a claim that does not reflect the consensus of historians, legal scholars or the judiciary.

The idea of a unified “Judeo-Christian” tradition is itself a misleading modern construction. It did not come from Judaism. It emerged within a Christian framework and recasts Judaism as a precursor to Christianity rather than a living, evolving tradition in its own right.

Alabama students, like students across this country, deserve an education that is accurate, intellectually honest and grounded in real scholarship. Public schools should be places where students can form identities they are proud of, develop the values that guide them, and begin to understand how they can contribute to the world around them. They should be places where students feel safe, nurtured and valued.

This law erodes those principles. Instead, it replaces real education with ideology, narrowing what students are allowed to learn and how they are taught to understand their country. It denies students exposure to the full diversity of American religious life, replacing that rich landscape with a single, imposed narrative.

When a classroom wall presents one version of a religious text as if it were foundational to civic life, it sends a message. Some students will see themselves reflected in the text. Others, like my children, will learn that they are on the outside. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists and others will be further pushed to the margins.

This law is about power: who has it, and who does not. It is about whose story is told, and whose is reshaped to fit someone else’s narrative. And it teaches something dangerous: not to think, but to conform. To get in line. To stay silent. To learn, early on, where you stand.

The United States cannot be great when it elevates one religion over others. Our students deserve better than indoctrination presented as education. They deserve a system that reflects that we are a nation shaped not by one tradition, but by many.

As a rabbi, I am angry that a sacred text from my tradition is being taken, altered and presented as something it is not.

As a Jew, I am furious that our story is being stripped of its context and repurposed in a way that marginalizes others.

And as a father of two children who will be in public school, I am deeply uneasy about what this signals to them about who belongs — and who does not.

That is why we must speak out and do everything we can to oppose and repeal this law. We must work to protect a better kind of American society — one that ensures our public institutions remain open to all, and that our children grow up in a world that reflects the dignity of difference, not the demand for conformity.

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